Herman Cain is bedeviled by yet another media cycle of salacious allegations. Ginger White is the latest accuser to step forward, alleging a 13-year affair with the Republican presidential candidate. What caught Noman's eye in the original story was the following:
Ms. White said she came forward after seeing how Mr. Cain, a businessman who lives in Atlanta, treated the women who had accused him of harassment.
“It bothered me that they were being demonized,” Ms. White said. “I felt bad for them.”
Perhaps Cain should have announced that he felt their pain, while disclaiming that he played any role in causing it.
Personally, Noman feels badly for Cain. If the accusations are true, the man fell prey to his libido and the charms of faux-glam women like Sharon Bialek. He is to be pitied as a figure in Greek tragedy, or anyone with poor character judgment. If the accusations are false, he has no way of defending himself. His fate depends on what the public believes, and that is the media's bailiwick. Unfortunately for Cain, it supports the other Party, and considers his presence on the debate stage a nuisance.
Noman takes White's point, and doesn't condone demonization. But, one man's demonization is another man's fact reporting. The women who have thus far surfaced to impugn Cain's character and torpedo his political campaign have uniformly checkered histories, thin stories and good reasons to expect star treatment from the media. (Noman hopes, but doubts, that some enterprising reporter will be scrutinizing their debt forgiveness, money flows, lifestyle changes and upticks in fortune.) Ironically, the accusers expect the public to accept their stories on the basis of character and credibility.
White has the whole combo-platter of questionable accuser attributes: She's another financially troubled, twice-divorced, unemployed single mother, who has claimed sexual harassment in the past, declared bankruptcy once, was accused of stalking and had a libel judgment entered against her just this year. So far in 2011, she's had nine liens put on her property.
But we're supposed to ignore all of that because she's the third woman of questionable character to make an implausible allegation. Liberals say there's a pattern, but the only pattern is of their making far-fetched accusations of a sexual nature against Cain.
These women are like triple-A ball players with the stats being: number of bankruptcies, smallest bank account, number of liens, most false claims, number of children out of wedlock, degrees of separation from David Axelrod, total trips to human resources and so on.
That wouldn't be dispositive -- except for the fact that their only evidence is their word.
White's other evidence consists of a signed book, money given to her by Cain, and lots of phone messages, which pales in comparison to Gennifer Flowers'--the obvious comparison's--evidence:
Gennifer Flowers produced taped telephone calls with Clinton totaling thousands of words between them, with him counseling her on how to deny their affair: "If they ever hit you with it, just say no, and go on. There's nothing they can do ... But when they -- if somebody contacts you, I need to know ... All you got to do is deny it."
Let`s pretend for a moment that we`re discussing real life here instead of politics. Sadly enough, these things happen. They may simply happen more frequently to politicians. Just as we`ve come to accept that most politicians of a certain age likely smoked pot at some time in their past, so we`ve come to accept that, given the combination of megalomania and charisma needed to run for office, some candidates may at one time have found ego gratification with actress/models or television reporter/nightclub singers, the kind of women who, when they go public, tend to have flattering 8-by-10 glossies readily available.
This matters to different people in different degrees, from those who think it is unforgivable to those who think it`s inevitable. Call it character. Call it a way of seeing women. Call it the sleaze factor. You put together ``forsaking all others,`` ``I will never lie to you`` and ``here`s my room key,`` and you`ve got a credibility gap, in real life and in politics too.
In the last 30 years, we have moved from wondering whether it happens to wondering whether it matters. Now we care about how it is handled, about getting out of a jam with dignity.
If this were real life, Dear Abby would tell you that if you loved Bill Clinton enough, you should accept his story and put all this out of your mind. And that`s probably good political advice too. I`m not sure anyone loves Clinton that much yet. The Democrats I talk to have a clear idea of who they want for president: ABB. Anyone But Bush. If enough people feel that Bill Clinton is necessary to his party, his alleged indiscretions will become secondary to his absolute indispensability.
Since this year's ABB--"Anybody But Barack"--is the middle class's hope and plea, not the media's, the Quindlen standard won't apply to Cain, or his accusers. The tables have been reversed, the accusers have been made to look sympathetic rather than predatory, and Cain is being hounded out of the race rather than kept in it.
As Coulter concludes:
But this is how liberals dirty you up when they've got nothing: They launch a series of false accusations, knowing that Americans with busy lives won't follow each story to the end and notice that they were all blind alleys.
The liberal media is an old story, but it's still a big story when it comes to creating the impression of scandal out of thin air.
Most people say, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." I say, "Where there's smoke around a conservative, there are journalists furiously rubbing two sticks together."
Noman's only disagreement is with the notion of journalists rubbing sticks together to create smoke. Dragons have readier means at their disposal. And, the whiff of sulfur enveloping the media's political machinations indicates another source of power altogether.
Ann Coulter wrote an illuminating column last week about David Axelrod, President Obama's top political advisor. His specialty is planting sexual scandals in the media about the President's opponents.
[A]s extensively detailed in my book Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America, the only reason Obama became a U.S. senator -- allowing him to run for president -- is that David Axelrod pulled sealed divorce records out of a hat, first, against Obama's Democratic primary opponent, and then against Obama's Republican opponent.
Noman read "Guilty," and encourages you to do the same. The appended article gives the shorthand version.
Luckily for Axelrod, Obama's opponent in the general election had also been divorced.
The Republican nominee was Jack Ryan, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard law and business schools, who had left his lucrative partnership at Goldman Sachs to teach at an inner-city school on the South Side of Chicago.
But in a child custody dispute some years earlier, Ryan's ex-wife, Hollywood sex kitten Jeri Lynn Ryan, had alleged that, while the couple was married, Jack had taken her to swingers clubs in Paris and New York.
Noman suspects that Jeri Ryan is not shy about her sexuality. The bad no-boy in him even wonders whether Jack or Jeri suggested the entertainment?
Minimally, before he got lathered up by salacious pre-election media accounts, Noman would want to know how they met, what the basis of their relationship was, whether it was regular behavior for them, and the like. But, he would mostly have preferred not to know about their marriage.
Custody battles tend to get ugly and involve all sorts of accusations. This battle was contentious enough that court records had been permanently sealed. No problem for Axelrod.
Axelrod's courthouse moles obtained the "sealed" records and, in no time, they were in the hands of every political operative in Chicago. Knowing perfectly well what was in the records, Chicago Tribune attorneys flew to California and requested that the court officially "unseal" them -- over the objections of both Jack and Jeri Ryan.
A California judge ordered them unsealed, which allowed newspapers to publish the salacious allegations, and four days later, Ryan dropped out of the race under pressure from idiot Republicans (who should be tracked down and shot).
And that's how Obama became a senator four years after losing a congressional race to Bobby Rush. (In a disastrous turn of events, Rush was not divorced.)
Axelrod destroyed the only two men who stood between Obama and the Senate with illicitly obtained, lurid allegations from their pasts.
Coulter's column was occasioned by discovery that the most recent accusation of sexual impropriety leveled against Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain was made by a neighbor of... surprise... Axelrod's, Sharon Bialek.
As the attached article describes, Ms. Bialek is hardly a credible witness. And, somehow, she managed to diminish what little gravitas she had by bringing Gloria "All Red" Allred onstage with her. Long time followers of Ms. Allred's escapades know a three-ring-media-trial when they see one.
This time, Obama's little helpers have not only thrown a bomb into the Republican primary, but are hoping to destroy the man who deprives the Democrats of their only argument in 2012: If you oppose Obama, you must be a racist.
Bialek was forced to surrender her bite on the limelight after a whirlwind day on the all the national talk shows.
The damage to Cain has been done, however. He was too new to the public eye to withstand scandal so early in his public courtship of the electorate.
Neither he nor his wife Gloria are as slick at parsing reality as candidate Bill Clinton and Hillary were in 1992. BTW, Noman marvels at the former President's skillfulness at turning his mendacious rebuttals of truthful accusations into a test of the media's character rather than his own.
Unlike the former President, Cain may not even be guilty. That will not likely be enough to save him.
Noman has no idea of what happened in the 1990's when Cain was the President of the National Restaurant Association. Nor does he know for certain who is behind this orchestrated campaign of character assassination, whether deserved or not.
But, he thought to disseminate Coulter's article to let people know that the President and his handlers have a history of operating this way.
Herman Cain took more grief last night from a media intent on pinning him with the donkey tail of "misogynist-black-man-with-white-women-issues."
After the debate, a CNBC reporter questioned Cain about whether his pejorative reference to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as "Princess Nancy" wasn't particularly inapposite given his alleged problems with women.
"Cain calls Pelosi "Princess Nancy". Maybe not smartest for a guy trying to fight back against harassment allegations?" Tweeted The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza added: "Princess Nancy"! That will be really helpful for Cain's reputation as someone who has utmost respect for women."
Meanwhile, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein wrote: "When you're accused of serial sexual harassment, you should probably stay away from calling the top dem official in the house "princess."
Someone by the Twitter handle of "Princess Pelosi" - who first Tweeted on November 4 - responded to Cain's remark with a sarcastic message: "I love when Herman Cain calls me a #princess it reminds me of my place #cnbcdebate #gopdebate #generalaxelrod".
"That was a statement that I probably shouldn't have made, but I was trying to make a point,"he said.
The point--made in reference to a challenging question about the candidates' fall back plans should ObamaCare be repealed--concerned an alternative bill that Speaker Pelosi buried in committee. Cain's derision was leveled at her imperious exercise of legislative power.
Note the presumptions in the reporters' remarks. Ryan Lizza thinks it impossible to respect women in general, and not Pelosi in particular. Does he also think that his media colleagues who disrespected President Bush, for instance, disrespected men generally? Sam Stein thinks Cain is accused of serial sexual harassment. Actually, Cain has been serially accused of sexual harassment, a nuance that says more about the smear campaign than it does about the smear victim.
Note also the lack of interest in the questions of whether: Pelosi does indeed act like a princess; or her actions as House Speaker merited the sobriquet; or the actions of a powerful woman should be shielded from derision because she is a woman; or how it came to pass that someone like her could become the top Democratic official in the house?
As always with the press, scrutiny is fixed on the Republican, not the Democrat.
The comments indicate that the reporters' narrative is already settled, as are the rules of engagement. Once accused of sexual harassment, a man's: (1) every reference to women--even to a public, willful, bossy, tyrannical legislator with a peremptory manner--will be scrutinized for misogyny; (2) your reputation is shot as everyone knows you don't respect women; and (3) snide cracks about top democratic officials are off limits.
Cain's remark recalled to Noman a vignette about Speaker Pelosi in Hank Paulson's financial crisis memoir, "On The Brink."
We were to meet in Nancy Pelosi's conference room, adjacent to her office in the Capitol. Always smartly turned out, the Speaker of the House maintained an elegant, almost formal atmosphere, with fresh flowers and bowls of chocolates, that was quite removed from the rough-and-tumble of the floor. Once, when I walked in with a cup of Diet Coke, she said, "Oh, we don't use plastic cups," and an aide promptly handed me a very nice glass for my drink.
Earlier he recounts that after Lehman Brothers' collapse, with AIG tottering on the brink, the global financial system imploding and panic setting into the public psyche, he had difficulty arranging an urgent meeting with the House Speaker and Democrats:
I next had to make arrangements to go to the Hill. In the afternoon, I'd run into resistance trying to get something scheduled. Before the PWG (President's Working Group) meeting I had spoken with Nancy Pelosi more than once, telling her that although the Fed hadn't made a final decision yet on the AIG loan, we probably would need to meet with congressional leaders to discuss it. I told her it was an emergency, but she'd replied: "This is difficult to schedule on short notice. Do we need to do it tonight?"
Later in the crisis, with the automobile manufacturers on the brink of collapse, Paulson recounts his efforts to release $25 billion of funds that Congress had already approved for them:
Meantime the automakers continued to struggle. The White House's hopes of redirecting the $25 billion in low-interest fuel efficiency loans to bail out the companies had hit a wall. It couldn't legally be done unless Congress changed the lanuage of its legislation, but Nancy Pelosi refused. She was unwilling to change the bill's environmental focus. Instead, she insisted that I had the authority to use TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds to rescue the car companies, which had been pleading their case in Washington with some success.
Pelosi forced Paulson into using resources appropriated for saving the financial system to bail out the automobile makers, by conditioning Congress's release of the last tranche of TARP funds on it. The money was needed to shore up Citigroup, the systemically important financial behemoth.
[I] had to duck out of the room a few times to take calls, including two from Nancy Pelosi, who told me point-blank that it was politically impossible to rescue Citi and not help the automakers...
I was worried that we didn't have enough resources to take care of the financial system , much less the automakers, which couldn't seem to come up with a plan for their long-term viability.
"We're going to need more money from TARP," I told her. "Do you realize what we just escaped with Citi?"
It's going to be very hard," she said. "The American People don't support it, and I don't have the votes."
"[I]t was obvious that the politically astute Speaker ... knew that an auto bailout would depend on the Democrats--the Republicans were lined up against it--and she wanted me to fall on my sword by using TARP money for a very politically unpopular act.
Paulson, and President Bush, did indeed fall on their swords to bail out a key Democratic Party constituency, the United Auto Worker's union (UAW) that destroyed the Big Three US automakers.
Paulson's book contains many such anecdotes, permitting one reasonably to conclude that "princess" is not too harsh a title for Nancy Pelosi, and perhaps even a charitable one.
To underscore the point, Noman posts a revealing montage of Speaker Pelosi that somebody put together last year while she still held power.
Beyond her governance, there is also the issue of how she reveled in her privileges and perquisites, e.g., her travel on a military jet, which was required of the House Speaker after 9/11.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over a recent two-year period.
"Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time his organization's report came out. "And these documents suggest the speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else."
On substance, she is as regally detached from reality as any princess because she is permitted by a complicit press to say absolutely any- and everything without serious questioning, or consequence.
A week ago she alleged that without President Obama's initial stimulus, America would be suffering 15% unemployment rather than its now-chronic 9%. Note that she almost choked when saying it, indicating that she knew she was blowing smoke, and that God has a sense of humor. It was, after all, up to him to mock her risible pretensions because the media certainly wouldn't.
It is so commonplace for Democrats to be granted free passes on their outlandish statements that Noman thought she might as well allege 25%, or 40%, or any absurdly high number. She will never be pressed by the media to support her claims with empirical data or plausible theory. As credulity was already stretched beyond the limit by 15%, she had nothing to lose.
Since this post concerns Herman Cain's alleged problems disrespecting white women as much as it does Nancy Pelosi's illusions of grandeur, Noman would like to draw to a close with the prose of a black man who really did have a white-woman problem, Liberal icon Eldridge Cleaver.
I love you
Because you're white,
Not because you're charming
Or bright.
Your whiteness
Is a silky thread
Snaking through my thoughts
In redhot patterns
Of lust and desire.
I hate you
Because you're white.
Your white meat
Is nightmare food.
White is
The skin of Evil.
You're my Moby D*ck,
White Witch,
Symbol of the rope and hanging tree,
Of the burning cross.
Loving you thus
And hating you so,
My heart is torn in two.
Crucified.
Cleaver's best seller, "Soul On Ice," contains many such observations on the theme, which were written while serving time for rape.
Curiously, his writings were embraced by white liberals who campaigned to have him released from prison.
Judging from Cain's much-commented-upon and newly rising negatives, the people behind these accusations have tapped into a rich vein of white fear and mistrust. Some people apparently wonder if Cain is just a manicured Cleaver.
Cain's negatives doubled to 35% after two weeks of ballyhooed yet unsubstantiated accusations. That is almost as high as the 40% strong disapproval number that it took our first post-racial President nearly three years of opportunism, failure and demagoguery to earn.
Even in the age of Obama, it does not take long for people to jump to the worst conclusions about a black man's character. Noman wonders if the President takes any credit for that.
Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, MD has penned an interesting Op-ed on the respective church communities of President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain. Both worship--worshipped in the case of the President--in a predominantly black church.
Like President Obama, Mr. Cain belongs to a mostly black congregation with a black pastor. But that is where the similarities end. Stark differences between the political philosophies of these two men may be rooted in their profoundly different theological heritages. The churches both men are (or in the case of Mr. Obama, were) longtime members of are known for liberal activism, but with notable differences in their views of scripture.
Mr. Cain's church, Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta, Ga., is theologically conservative, affirming the inerrancy of scripture and historic Christian creeds as literally true.
The Chicago church where President Obama belonged for 20 years, Trinity United Church of Christ, is theologically liberal, eschewing scriptural inerrancy and taking apostolic creeds as "testimonies" of faith, rather than literally, unchangeably true. The scriptures are seen more as "living documents" than permanent anchors and pillars of faith.
Different perspectives regarding the fixity of truth and the credibility of scripture manifest themselves in the two men's political outlooks. As one would expect, the difference is especially pronounced regarding the social issues.
[M]r. Cain's ... views on social issues are consistent with his denomination—the National Baptist Convention—and with the majority of black Americans. Mr. Cain, like most black Americans, believes life begins at conception and that marriage is a sacred covenant between one man and one woman.
Mr. Obama, by contrast, has said that his views on redefining marriage to include same-sex couples are "evolving." This evolution has been clearly visible in his policies, including his vocal stance against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and his open opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act. His budgets and health-care plan have included taxpayer funding for abortions both domestically and abroad. These policies are consistent with the views of the United Churches of Christ.
With respect to the black experience and economics, the churches and candidates also diverge along Conservative and Liberal lines.
Perhaps it's easy to see how the two men's theological differences inform their views of family, but they also yield different understandings of the path to economic advancement.
Mr. Cain's church subscribes to traditional Christian theology, which sees the black experience in light of scripture. Mr. Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on the other hand, is known for teaching black liberation theology, which sees scripture in light of the black experience. It seeks to create a direct correlation between the black condition and the light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. The freedom they gained from whites is a part of the freedom Jesus promised.
According to Antioch's website, its early leaders "stressed the dignity of work and honest labor." By contrast, Trinity's website emphasizes God's displeasure with "America's economic mal-distribution." It's not surprising, then, that President Obama would see a government-run jobs program as the key to ending the current economic recession whereas Mr. Cain would look to private industry.
Red meat is what passes for strategy in the Democratic Party, analysis on MSNBC, and political writing at The Hill.
Noman prefers Jackson's analysis, which explains why Americans of most colors might feel more comfortable with someone who adheres to traditional theology regarding life, marriage, hard work, character and bearing life's many crosses, than they might with someone whose church caters to the angrily aggrieved. The latter will not bear sound doctrine, but according to his own desires will heap to himself teachers who tickle his ears.
Herman Cain's place on the theological spectrum is indeed more amenable to non-Liberal whites and non-embittered blacks than is Barack Obama's. Noman suspects that the President's partisans are acutely aware of this, which is why the hounds of scandal and character assassination have been loosed on Cain.
Because of the tawdry, non-disprovable allegations being hurled against him, and without intending to minimize the transgressions if true, Noman notes that given a choice between a man who accepts truth in principle but is unable to live it perfectly, and one who denies truth in principle but knows how to put on a good show for the public, he'll take the former.
He is the only one you can count on to have a conscience.
How fitting for the media to stage its first Republican lynching this political season over the Halloween weekend by revealing skeletons in Herman Cain's closet.
As No-wife said this evening, they must be really scared of him.
Who'd have thunk it? The straight-shooting man with the engaging smile is apparently a lothario. Or was. Or, so suggest reports that he sexually harassed two women in the 1990s. Or, was it three, or more?
One of the accusers who settled with the National Restaraunt Association that Cain headed wants to step forth and speak out candidly, now that she has let herself be used anonymously to smear him and he has had the temerity to defend himself. Or, maybe she doesn't.
A person close to the situation said Wednesday that no decision has been made about asking the National Restaurant Association to release the woman from a confidentiality agreement that was part of her settlement. Cain led the trade group while the woman worked there.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the accusations and says the fact that the incident has become public is very unsettling to the woman.
Noman can imagine how he feels. Whether or not she is released from her confidentiality agreement--the condition of her receipt of a modest sum in order to drop the matter and go away--Cain's reputation has been tarred and feathered.
Sexual harassment settlements are a commonplace feature of the contemporary American business scene.
Extreme care is always taken when terminating an employee that is a member of a protected class. Protected classes include women, anyone who can claim a disability, anyone over 40, and anyone who is not Caucasian.
Claims of sexual harassment by an employee about to be terminated are the easiest to make, the most difficult to refute, the most expensive to defend, and the most damaging to any executive on the receiving end of false charges. Hence, settling these charges, even when blatantly false, with a small payment and a mutual confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement is an everyday occurrence in the corporate world.
The Politico story made a great deal of the fact that the separation agreement given to the two accusers entailed a payment in the “five-figure” range. Having approved many of these agreements myself I can tell you that five-figures is what you pay when the separation is amicable, as it is a bargain compared to defending false charges in litigation... The going rate to cover up guilt is at least six figures, sometimes even seven. Just ask former presidential candidate John Edwards.
Insinuations that five-figure payments somehow corroborate the truth of accusations are an extreme act of reckless journalism. Or worse, they are not journalism at all but, rather, classic dirty campaign politics. Who can forget the story of one of Lyndon Johnson’s early Congressional campaigns in which he spread the rumor that his opponent had sexual relations with barnyard animals. “It couldn’t possibly be true!” a staffer complained. “I know,” said Lyndon, “but let’s make the bastard deny it.”
Cain is campaigning to re-write the tax code, reform government, take on better heeled and more experienced opponents, and shake up the Left's monopoly on minorities' fealty.
The media prefers to focus on more substantive issues such as whether he is a black man with an overactive libido, a sort of manicured Eldridge Cleaver. They want to make the bastard deny it.
One of the accusers is a spokeswoman for various federal agencies. The other works as a registered lobbyist in New Jersey. That is, they are both handsomely paid, establishment Lefties with vested interests in Statist governance. That doesn't address their veracity. But, it does contextualize their roles in the smear.
Is any man safe from accusations by political women--or women being used by political men to eliminate adversaries--who may have felt uncomfortable with something he has said, gestured or expressed on his face at one time or another? Is there any man safe from the accusation that he had made a woman uncomfortable, even if he hadn't? The questions are rhetorical, as every American man, and woman, knows that the answer is "no."
The legal standard is that of the reasonable woman. To articulate it--that which would make the reasonable woman uncomfortable--suffices to highlight the eggshell sensitivity under which men labor in today's professional world.
Pressed about what exactly Cain said to the employees of his show, Deace responded by describing how he himself treats his staff.
"Many a man has been done in by the inability to control his urges,” Deace wrote. “I am no different and just as vulnerable as any other man, which is why I put safeguards around me and hold myself accountable to my wife and other men in my life. Especially since I have very talented employees that happen to be women. I go out of my way to treat them like my sisters. For example, I wouldn't tell them or any other woman I am not married to nor related to how pretty she is."
That's all prudent advice by Deace. And Noman is sure that Cain, and every man, wishes that he'd lived by it every moment of his under-the-microscope life.
In these matters, in our world, sinless, platonic perfection is the standard that men (not women) are ironically held to. Neither are the mercy of God, reconciliation through sacraments, nor credit for reform available to him.
The worst motives are imputed to the most innocent of actions, and attributed to a man's innermost heart as a frozen testimony to his perpetual depravity.
A sixth sense for perceiving these things is even routinely and unquestioningly attributed to women, as if they are immune from the distortions of vanity, self-delusion, confused feelings, bitterness, or mere human fallibility.
Paradoxically, the motives so evidenced have been preached for decades as being the normal, natural and healthy response to interactions with the opposite sex, which only a repressed troglodyte would resist or deny.
On the substance of the allegations against Cain--motioning to a woman's height, flattering her looks, and inviting her into his apartment--it sounds pretty serious to Noman, much more so than a credible allegation of rape.
Expressing admiration for a woman's beauty is right up there with intoning "long dong silver."
Moreover, Noman cannot understand how Cain might have gotten the idea that it was acceptable to make advances to a woman--if that is what he did--during the Clinton 90's.
True, Gloria Steinem did articulate the "one free grope" rule in the Op-ed pages of the New York Times. But, that's no excuse for letting a woman know that she's attractive.
Noman recalls media reluctance to address any of these issues--in contradistinction to its present gusto--during President Clinton's perjury-littered performance in 1998 and 1999.
Had NBC aired the interview during the Senate impeachment trial and the furor over Monica S. Lewinsky, it might have had a significant impact on the political climate. Whether the story has any lasting significance now, outside the context of any legal or impeachment proceeding, is unclear. NBC executives say the Myers report needed further checking and corroboration before it could be broadcast.
Broaddrick told NBC she considered coming forward last year, after Kathleen E. Willey accused the president of groping her in the Oval Office. But, she said, "I just wasn't brave enough to do it."
Dabbing at her eye with a tissue, Broaddrick said she agreed to go on camera because "I just couldn't hold it in any longer." She said she did not want her grandchildren to ask: "Why didn't you tell what this man did to you?"
NBC interviewed four friends who say Broaddrick told them about the alleged assault soon afterward, including Norma Kelsey, who said she saw Broaddrick's swollen lip and torn pantyhose that day.
Broaddrick said she is pursuing no book deal or lawsuit, but that "all of these stories are floating around . . . and I was tired of everybody putting their own spin on it."
Myers asked: "What is the purpose? Do you want to destroy the president?"
"No, I don't want to do anything," Broaddrick said. "I do not have an agenda. I want to put all of these rumors to rest."
David P. Schippers, chief investigator for the House Judiciary Committee Republicans during the impeachment proceedings, said Tuesday that his staffers interviewed Broaddrick more than once and "have assured me that she is the most credible witness that either one of them have ever talked to."
A final caution is in order about getting swept up into Cain's alleged hormonal lapses. This year's sexual assault drama involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a man for whom Noman makes no brief, is instructive.
For the accuser,Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old Guinean immigrant, the result caps a precipitous fall. Prosecutors initially portrayed her as a credible and powerful witness, but then said that her myriad lies about her past — including a convincing, emotional but ultimately fraudulent account of being gang-raped by soldiers in Guinea — ended up undermining the case.
So, Naffissatou Diallo is a convincing and emotional fraud, and a repeated liar. She is also a calculating woman as evidenced by her strategizing with a convict (whose money she holds in trust) about how to best take advantage of her sexual encounter with a famous man.
Behold, the victim. Unless Diallo is one of a kind, there is much to consider, and regret, about Pavlovian social responses to salacious accusations.
But, at the end of June 2011, prosecutors said they no longer believed much of what she had told them about her circumstances or about herself. Since her initial allegation in May, Ms. Diallo had repeatedly lied, officials said. Within a day of the incident, she was recorded discussing the possible benefits of the case with an incarcerated man who was part of a group that had deposited about $100,000 in bank accounts controlled by the accuser. But Ms. Diallo's lawyer said translations of the taped conversations, two of them made a day after the encounter, misquoted his client. She had no intention of exploiting the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn to make money, he said.
The tawdry subject of sexual impropriety reminds Noman of a debate at Harvard Law School circa 1991 in which the evolving standards of evidence in sexual harassment cases were the topic of discussion.
Alan Dershowitz argued against the feminist position, which was guilty until proven innocent: an inversion of the traditional presumption of innocence, one of the keystone safeguards of liberty in America.
At one point in the debate, he leaned forward conspiratorially and said that he would explain why the proposals being discussed--and which were eventually adopted--were a very bad idea.
You could have heard a pin drop when he vituperated: "Women lie."
It was more than an inconvenient truth. It was a politically incorrect one for which he was not to be forgiven.
Noman doesn't recall ever feeling a more palpable sensation of laser-focused hatred than that directed at Dershowitz by the overwhelmingly female, nearly exclusively feminist audience at that moment.
The problem in Cain's case, which is simply too politically convenient for the Left, is that Leftists also lie: not exclusively, but habitually and without pang of conscience or restraint by principle.
It bears repeating that Chapter 2 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"--the bible of the community organizing left--is entitled "Of Means and Ends."
The classical, philosophically-realist position on the matter is that the end does not justify the means. Some means are legitimate. Some means are always and everywhere unjustifiable by virtue of their being intrinsically, objectively evil. Illicit means vitiate otherwise moral ends and action. They can never be sanitized by putatively noble ends.
Thus, one cannot resort to murder, or slander, in order to achieve a desirable end because, by their moral object, these means are always and everywhere morally wrong. The overall action would be immoral.
Not so, teaches Alinsky.
That perennial question, "Does the end justify the means?" is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"
Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends...Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem... He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.
The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation; he doesn't care enough for people to be 'corrupted' for them.
Therein lie so many problems with contemporary American politics.
First, it is folly, and dangerous folly at that, to seek salvation from political action. Salvation in this world is achieved by the transformative affect of hope in the next, and faith in God, not by hope in the utopia following political (or technological) revolution. We should all know after the fall of communism that the latter path is a Marxist chimera rather than a guide to sane action.
Second, Alinsky does not address the "immaculate conception" of means, ends and principles other than to appropriate a Catholic religious doctrine and sneer at it. Rather, he merely addresses the pragmatic and strategic value--not ontological and ethical value--of means and ends. Because of the primacy of his ends--the good of mankind, mass salvation--he is willing (heroically, to his mind) to be corrupted (Alinsky's term) by using foul means.
He can deny that such a thing as objectively foul means exists, and Alinsky does, though he is willing to risk personal corruption to demonstrate his care for people in the event that he is wrong. His blitheness indicates his ignorance about the gravity of ethics.
He can no more avoid the affect on his character, his co-nature, of evil means' use than he can avoid the affect of gravity on his body when stepping off a ledge. Denying it won't preserve him from the dire consequences.
Once man is personally corrupted, how is he to know that his ends are worthy, or that he perceives reality correctly, or that it is care for people and the good of mankind that is driving him? How does he know that he's not merely fooling himself, or brain-washed, or acting under the influence of self-righteousness or -assertion?
He doesn't. He is just corrupt, a malfunctioning perceiver of reality.
Third, how can one ever trust a man who is not willing to be bound in his actions by adherence to objective reality? He can justify any action to himself as a necessary means to his ends: sabotage, slander, false accusations, fomenting violence, you name it.
One cannot, which is why the President and his Party are in political trouble. They are self-identified opportunists who will say and do anything to achieve their political ends. Such men are not trustworthy.
Therein, too, lies the problem with the insinuations leveled against Cain. They come from the side of the political aisle--Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton's side, the Chicago side--that engages in this type of muck-raking without either qualm of conscience or commitment to truth.
It is all just hardball politics and cost-benefit analysis to them. And, when the media is your ally, indeed your alter ego, there are never any significant political costs to constrain action. No tactic is too low, too costly to engage in.
Herman Cain has some soul searching to do about the way he treats women, or treated them in the past. He would do well to review a number of instructive articles published during the Monica nightmare highlighting the pitfalls to powerful men of breathless, admiring, doe-eyed vixens drawn to power and wealth as metal is to a magnet.
Should Cain shake off the media's body block to his political aspirations, and win nomination and election to the Presidency, he will face these demons again. Better to repudiate them now, to erect safeguards, and to hold himself accountable to a higher standard of behavior than he is alleged to have done before. Whether guilty or not, that would be a positive good to come from this slime job.
Noman wishes him the best of luck. We are all only human. And, that predicament weighs more heavily, and unevenly, on men than on women these days, as it most probably always will on Republicans than on Democrats, and Conservatives than on Liberals.
